In 2019, black and brown journalists will continue to leave predominantly white news organizations that undervalue and underpay for our work. Journalists of color and queer journalists will challenge the value of legacy organizations considered prestige brands who refuse to make room for diverse voices, even as they lift ideas from writers of color and queer culture without crediting them.
We will not apply to “diversity fellowships” that ask a single person of color to do the work of five journalists and an editor. We will call out those news and publishing organizations who brag about their “diversity hires” and we will point to their attrition rates for journalists of color.
We will create our own spaces. We have to. We often do not feel safe in our workplaces, walking an invisible line between job security and self-respect. We will search for ways to thrive, not just survive.
More journalists of color and queer journalists will establish platforms in new and emerging outlets — run by us. Funding mechanisms like Patreon and Pactio will help pay some of the bills.
In 2019, we will still write and delete draft tweets, still ask ourselves: Should I bite my tongue to keep my job, or say something to keep my sanity?
Seema Yasmin is cofounder of the Survival Kit for Journalists of Color and a former staff writer at The Dallas Morning News.
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms